Ask HN: Database for collecting research data in rural areas

4 points by thangngoc89 7y ago ↗ HN

I'm designing an offline-first web apps that allows researchers to collect research data on-site in rural areas. The current requirements is that they would go out to areas with no electricity and fill out forms on their mobile devices. I choose mobile devices rather than laptop because everyone has it and with power banks, one can easily extend the battery.

At the end of the day, they would run return to hotel and sync the data with a remote or local server. I did my research and it seems like these are promising solutions:

- PouchDB (https://pouchdb.com/) - Gun.js (https://gun.eco) - Roll my own

Do you have any experiences regarding this?

4 comments

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two2wyes 7y ago ↗

Have you looked into https://datproject.org ?

The dat protocol originated as well as a way to facilitate sharing in the scientific community: https://www.datprotocol.com/

There is a project of a browser built on top of it: https://beakerbrowser.com It's only nodeJS for now, but maybe serves as inspiration.

thangngoc89 7y ago ↗

Thank you for responding. After a quick glance at datproject, I feel like it is not a fit for me. Dat feels like a better torrent for archiving data, not a protocol for building offline-first app with complex API

jchanimal 7y ago ↗

Couchbase Mobile's Couchbase Lite for iOS, Android, etc is open source and offers peer-to-peer sync. I'm not sure if it currently syncs with PouchDB also, but I think it might. https://www.couchbase.com/products/mobile

Here is one user doing similar stuff with it: https://www.datanami.com/2017/11/07/african-hospitals-go-dig...

And here is an older iteration: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/couchdb-zambia-healthcare.h...

thangngoc89 7y ago ↗

Thank you very much for your response. I didn't know about Couchbase and its relation with PouchDB. Those case study is also interesting as well. I'll take a closer look at those.